Verizon sees value in transforming network to IP, fiber, but conversion challenges remain

When the 2012 Hurricane Sandy destroyed all of its copper facilities in its Manhattan (NY) Broad Street Central Office (CO), Verizon decided to rebuild the site from scratch with fiber, kicking off a widespread copper-to-fiber migration across all of its network. Sampath Sowmyanarayan, senior vice president of transformation for Verizon, said by converting that CO to only fiber, it was able to realize immediate new revenue opportunities because it could extend FiOS to more customers in New York City. "This was the first CO where we transferred everything from copper to fiber, so this is a whole CO that does not have an ounce of copper in it," Sowmyanarayan said. "In that process, we created new revenues because we were able to bring fiber to more premises, a new cost model and truly transforming the network."

Sowmyanarayan added that the telecommunications company has a long way to go until it can claim network transformation throughout the company. It still has another 2,000 sites to convert from copper to fiber. "We have done this copper-to-fiber conversion seven times now, which is the good news," Sowmyanarayan said. "We now have 2,000 more to go."